Blowin' through the jasmine in my mind

Sitting in a bar with my 10-year-old, a 1972 soft-rock classic† reminded me of the importance of showing up in person to do nothing really important.

The image from James Seals’ & Dash Crofts’ 1972 album, Summer Breeze.

I first heard Seals & Crofts “Summer Breeze” through either a tiny transistor radio or the shitty speakers of whatever General Motors gas-guzzler my parents drove in 1972, when the song first “hit the airwaves,” as they used to say. It’s one of those tunes that, for anyone whose early-childhood soundtrack is a carousel of Seventies radio classics, immediately transports you to a now-extinct time and place, before you had worries.

As James Seals and Dash Crofts sang the chorus:

Summer breeze makes me feel fine
Blowin' through the jasmine in my mind

I’ll admit the 7-year-old me misheard the last half as Goin’ to the bathroom in my mind (which at the time made more sense to sing about than the actual lyrics). But it didn’t matter, because “Summer Breeze” in music and lyrics made cosmic sense, even to a child, as portraying the right way to experience life’s small moments. You come home after a long day, you see the people who matter to you and to whom you matter, you sit down and appreciate the simplest of things: A June draft fluttering the curtains.

Or, translated into 2026 terms, you place your mobile device in another room, engage with people that are in front of you, not on X or Instagram, and pay attention to what is (or isn’t) happening IRL, moment by moment. And that’s it. That’s how you stay on top of the world, instead of feeling buried by it: Giving the human moments a chance to happen.

Spotted near Lake Michigan: A 1970 AMC Rebel with a 550 under the hood.

All the above occurred to me in a two-second reverie yesterday, as I sat at the bar of a low-key pub in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, with my 10-year-old daughter. It was late afternoon, and we needed a cheeseburger after a day spent outside. The iconic 10-note opening to “Summer Breeze” (which includes the distinct tones from a child’s piano) all but grabbed me by the collar, and as my kid glugged her lemonade, I told her about my “goin’ to the bathroom in my mind” mondegreen.

She laughed until lemonade dripped off her chin.

And that’s when it hit me: I’m doing it. I’m doing exactly what Seals & Crofts were singing about. I’m sitting around with my kid eating cheeseburgers, talking with the bartenders about the tourists and the weather and the two retrievers lounging around the grassy yard: ”Blowin’ through the jasmine in my mind.”

In 1975, Seals told Melody Maker that "Summer Breeze" was intended, in a way, to free people from themselves. "A prison can be the prison of self,” he’s quoted saying, “and a person can become insecure and paranoid if he doesn't have a direction in his personal life."

It feels as if he’s talking to us, here today.

I thought of how radically different American life is today compared with 1972, when there were three network TV channels, answering machines were still science fiction and American women were still two years away from gaining the federal right to open a bank account without a male co-signer.

I thought about how the more I can keep my phone pocketed—or left behind entirely—the more I’ll probably end up face-to-face with a human who matters to me and to whom I matter (even if only a little bit), and appreciating a warm breeze through the window curtains. Or, more likely, a cool breeze.

And I thought of what the modern-day equivalents of blowin’ through the jasmine of our minds are for anyone in need of more time on top of the world and less time digging out from under it. The bridge in “Summer Breeze,” says it best:

Sweet days of summer, the jasmine's in bloom
July is dressed up and playing her tune
And I come home from a hard day's work
And you're waiting there, not a care in the world

As your summer takes shape, stay alert to your own versions of a summer breeze, in whatever form they may present themselves. Mine the lyrics of your favorite 70s songs for their analog-era wisdom—in an emergency, 80s songs might also work—and use it as an antidote, to avoid aging into a metastasizing digital-screen habit.

We all need more jasmine blowing through our minds nowadays.

† I know this is dangling modifier. But even though I’m a grammar nerd, it didn’t bother me the way “really unique” and “irregardless” do. So there it is, still dangling.